O, R (On the Application Of) v Secretary of State for International Development

Standing in judicial review is assessed contextually and should not be approached restrictively. A claimant need not show a personal interest where he is acting in the public interest and can genuinely say that the issue directly affects the section of the public represented. The court must distinguish a legitimate concern from mere busybody litigation. At the permission stage, factual disputes relevant to standing should ordinarily be resolved only where the issue is obvious. Permission should be granted where the claim is reasonably arguable and merits full investigation. A general commitment to transparency does not, without more, create a binding promise to publish a particular assessment document.

The claimant, an Ethiopian citizen, sought permission to challenge the Secretary of State's conduct in providing development assistance to Ethiopia under the International Development Act 2002. He alleged that UK aid contributed indirectly to Ethiopia's villagisation programme, in which he claimed to have suffered human rights abuses.

He challenged the alleged inadequacy of the Secretary of State's process for assessing Ethiopia's human rights compliance and her refusal to publish a November 2013 Partnership Principles Assessment. The court was required to determine whether the claim was in time, whether the claimant had sufficient interest, and whether either ground was arguable.

1. Standing. The requirement of sufficient interest under section 31(3) of the Senior Courts Act 1981 is jurisdictional, but elastic and dependent on context. The authorities in AXA General Insurance Ltd & Ors v HM Advocate & Ors [2011] UKSC 46 and Walton v The Scottish Ministers [2012] UKSC 44 provide the relevant guidance. The claimant was not a mere busybody. His evidence provided a sufficient basis for personal and direct impact, and a sufficiently arguable linkage between UK aid, the villagisation programme and the continuing or prospective effect on him and his family.
2. The standing issue should not ordinarily be determined at permission stage unless obvious. The court therefore accepted the claimant's witness statement provisionally and declined to dismiss the claim for want of sufficient interest.
3. Ground 1. The challenge to the adequacy of the Secretary of State's system for obtaining and assessing information about Ethiopia's human rights record was reasonably arguable. The court accepted that the duty to take reasonable steps to obtain relevant information, described in Secretary of State for Education and Science v Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council [1977] QC 1014, was engaged. The intensity and manner of inquiry remained matters for the public body, subject to rationality. The claimant's allegations that relevant evidence had been ignored, insufficiently investigated, or assessed by reference to irrelevant considerations could not be dismissed without a full hearing.
4. Ground 2. The transparency commitments in the defendant's policies did not arguably amount to a promise to publish the Partnership Principles Assessment, either wholly or partly, or to publish every document of that kind. Permission was therefore refused on this ground, although non-publication could still be relied upon as part of Ground 1 if relevant to the lawfulness of the assessment process.
5. The court granted permission for judicial review on Ground 1 and refused permission on Ground 2.